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Fast Broadband To Be Classed a Fundamental Right in the UK (bbc.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the don't-want-to-risk-another-rebellion dept.

Mark Wilson writes: Every home and business in the UK will have access to "fast broadband" by 2020. This is the latest pledge from Prime Minister David Cameron, who said access to the internet "should be a right." At the moment, 83% of homes and businesses in Britain have access to broadband connections 24Mbps and faster. By 2017, this is expected to rise to 95%. The latest plan is directed at the "last 5 percent" — such as people in remote areas — and will oblige broadband providers to supply at least 10Mbps broadband to anyone who demands it.

8 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Fundamental right????? by Nutria · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When everything is a fundamental right, then that completely devalues the definition of "fundamental".

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    1. Re:Fundamental right????? by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When everything is a fundamental right, then that completely devalues the definition of "fundamental".

      Internet access should be enshrined as a right. This extends beyond just remote rural citizens to everyday citizens everyday lives.

      I'm sure you recall the scene in the matrix where Neo demands his call and they edit out his mouth. "What good is a phone call if you can't speak..."

      In modern society the internet is replacing the post office. We increasingly use it to commuicate with eachother and with our government.

      To deny someone the internet in 2020 is akin to denying them the post office in 1920. Not only should access be mandated, but it really should be enshrined as a right -- such that it cannot be easily curtailed by a judge or future legislators at whim.

    2. Re:Fundamental right????? by Nutria · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What if access to the railroads had been enshrined a fundamental right back in the 1940s? After all, "freedom of movement", right? But that would have stifled the growth of roads, and we're much more mobile now than we were 70 years ago. Same thing with newspapers and freedom of speech.

      It's infinitely better that fundamental rights be generically written so as not to tie civilization to any one specific technology.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    3. Re:Fundamental right????? by onthemightofprinces · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's a 'right' that nobody in the UK wants. In fact we ourselves petitioned the government to ban handguns and the like because we considered the right to life as more important than the right for gun companies to make a profit.

    4. Re:Fundamental right????? by davester666 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's more of a "right not to be killed by a gun-bearing lunatic, right not to be killed by finding sometime lying around the house while you are growing up"

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  2. Curiously by Burz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No right to privacy, eh? If you're building a police state, it makes for a convenient combination of priorities.

    For that matter, why not make free speech a fundamental right? Or has Cameron forgotten he's in the UK?

  3. Re:A right does not obligate anyone to act by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes and just like Ayn Rand you'll undoubtedly end up on benefits when you grow up, because there's no way anyone so profoundly selfish as you will make it very far in life by yourself. I'm sure you also don't ever travel on roads that other people have built right? I'm sure you're not currently using the very internet that was designed and developed as the result of government funded R&D yes? I'm sure you don't drink water pumped through government subsidised infrastructure right?

    We're a social species, our very existence has depended on the fact that we've worked together to survive over the years. There's your fundamental fucking right, it is our evolved way. If you aren't part of that you're an anomaly in the human race, and are not fit to survive.

    Going back to fundamentals as you put it, you would be easy fodder for those humans who have decided to work together whilst you isolate yourself and make yourself a trivial threat to dispatch. You shouldn't be here. The only reason you are is because civilisation and it's social aspects protect even idiots like you.

    If you don't understand that humans are a social species, and working together is in our DNA, then you have serious problems.

  4. Entitlement by BradMajors · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not a right, an entitlement. A right is something the government can not stop you from doing. An entitlement is something the government must provide you. The distinction is important. Governments do not provide anyone with rights. Governments can only take rights away.